Heraclius was born in eastern Anatolia. His father, probably of Armenian descent, was governor of the Roman province of Africa when an appeal came from Constantinople to save the Eastern Roman Empire from the terror and incompetence of the emperor Phocas. The Governor equipped an expeditionary force and put his devout son, the blond and gray-eyed Heraclius, in command of it.

In October 610 Heraclius dropped anchor off Constantinople, deposed Phocas, and was crowned emperor of a crumbling state, occupied by invaders and wracked with internal dissension. Slavs swarmed over the Balkan Peninsula. The Persians occupied extensive parts of Anatolia. The Turkic Avars, who ruled over the Slavic and other tribes that occupied the region between the Don and the Alps, exacted tribute. With its economy disrupted, its administration disorganized, its army depleted and demoralized, its factions engaging in civil strife, its peasants enfeebled by excessive exactions, its religious dissenters alienated by persecution, and its authority challenged by a powerful aristocracy, the empire lacked the strength necessary to expel the invaders, and possibly even to survive.

In 614 the Persians conquered Syria and Palestine, taking Jerusalem and what was believed to be Christ’s Cross, and in 619 occupied Egypt and Libya. In an effort to placate the Avars, Heraclius met them at Thracian Heraclea (617 or 619). They sought to capture him, and he rode madly back to Constantinople, hotly pursued. Overlooking their perfidy, he finally made peace with them and was free to take the offensive against the Persians.

In 622, clad as a penitent and bearing a sacred image of the Virgin, he left Constantinople, as prayers rose from its many sanctuaries for victory over the Persian Zoroastrians, the recovery of the Cross, and the reconquest of Jerusalem. He was, in effect, leading the first crusade. Indeed, in the ensuing hostilities, a pious poet contrasted the dancing girls in the Persian general’s tent with the psalm singers in the Emperor’s. In a brilliant campaign, he manoeuvred the Persians out of Anatolia and suggested a truce to the Persian monarch. This offer Khosrow II contemptuously rejected, referring to himself as beloved by the gods and master of the world, to Heraclius as his abject and imbecilic slave, and to Christ as incapable of saving the empire. Mindful of the propagandistic value of Khosrow’s response, Heraclius made it public.

The next two years he devoted to campaigns in Armenia, the manpower of which was vital to the empire, and to a devastating invasion of Persia. In 625 Heraclius retired to Anatolia. He had encamped on the west bank of the Sarus River when the Persian forces appeared on the opposite bank. Many of his men rushed impetuously across the bridge and were ambushed and annihilated by the enemy.

Emerging from his tent, Heraclius saw the triumphant Persians crossing the bridge. The fate of the empire hung in the balance. Seizing his sword, he ran to the bridge and struck down the Persian leader. His soldiers closed rank behind him and beat back the foe.

In 626 the Persians advanced to the Bosporus, hoping to join the Avars in an assault on the land walls of Constantinople. But the Romans sank the primitive Avar fleet that was to transport Persian units across the Bosporus and repelled the unsupported Avar assault. Heraclius again invaded Persia and in December 627, after a march across the Armenian highlands into the Tigris plain, met the Persians near the ruins of Nineveh. There, astride his renowned war-horse, he killed three Persian generals in single combat, charged into enemy ranks at the head of his troops, killed the Persian commander, and scattered the Persian host.

A month later, Heraclius entered Dastagird with its stupendous treasure. Khosrow was overthrown by his son, with whom Heraclius made peace, demanding only the return of the Cross, the captives, and conquered Roman territory. Returning to Constantinople in triumph, he was hailed as a Moses, an Alexander, a Scipio. In 630 he personally restored the Cross to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Since the 4th century, when Roman emperors adopted Christianity, they had endeavoured to preserve uniform theological belief and, notably in Egypt, Syria, and Armenia, had persecuted those with differing Christological views. The animosities thus created had facilitated the Persian conquest, and Heraclius sought to conciliate the dissenters with the doctrine of Christ’s single will (monothelitism). He failed.

It was already too late, however. United by Islām, the Arabs swept out of their arid homeland into Syria (634). Broken in body and spirit by disease, by long years of the cares of state, and by the wounds and emotions of 100 battles, Heraclius did not take personal command of the army, although the sight of him in battle armour would have inspired the troops and silenced the bickering generals. The Byzantines were defeated in a great battle on the Yarmuk (636). Soon, Syria and later Egypt fell to the Arabs. Heraclius returned northward, bearing the “holy wood,” once the object of his greatest glory, now the companion of his deepest sorrow. Fearing water, he remained a year on the Asiatic bank of the Bosporus before summoning the courage to cross to Constantinople on a pontoon bridge with foliage hiding the water.

Heraclius’ first wife, Eudocia, had died in 612. A year later, he had married his niece Martina, thus offending the religious scruples of many of his subjects, who viewed his second marriage as incestuous and Martina as accursed. It was apparently a happy marriage, Martina accompanying him on his campaigns and bearing him nine children. During his last years, Heraclius seems to have suffered from enlargement of the prostate gland, retention of urine, and a consequent inflammation. After violent spasms, he died in February 641, bequeathing the empire to his two elder sons, the consumptive Constantine III of his first marriage and Heracleonas, his son by Martina.

Although Heraclius possessed a deep Christian faith and attributed his successes to God, the once widely accepted view of him as an inspired visionary, who was capable of supreme but spasmodic efforts and wondrous achievements when acting under divine promptings, would appear to be false.

No doubt he was an inspiring military leader who fired his army with religious fervour and whose personal intrepidity, imaginative tactics, and constant concern for his men evoked their love and loyalty. But he was also a cautious and calculating strategist who did not hesitate to employ religion to serve his military ends. Thus, when in 623 his victorious soldiers wanted to penetrate deeper into Persia, contrary to his plan to retire, he referred the matter to God. After his troops had fasted and prayed three days, he opened the Bible in their presence, apparently at random, and read a passage that could be interpreted only as a divine command to withdraw. Moreover, even though he fostered the crusading spirit, he waged war in a less inhumane manner than most of his contemporaries. He did not enslave or massacre the inhabitants of conquered towns and he treated his prisoners of war well, releasing them rather than butchering them when he could not feed them. His mercy contrasted sharply with Khosrow’s acerbity and probably hastened his victory in Persia.

As a statesman it is also difficult to think of him as merely a religious fanatic. Certainly he inspired an oppressed and hopeless people with a new spirit of faith, service, and self-sacrifice; but the man who restored a state that was sinking under the blows of internecine strife and foreign invasion and gave it the strength to withstand Islām’s assaults for four centuries, perhaps even contributing to its survival until 1453, must have had a strong will, great organizing ability, exceptional conciliatory powers, and deep insight into the needs of both state and subjects. With a keen sense of reality, he adjusted the empire to the needs of the 7th century, departmentalizing the great state offices and replacing Latin with Greek as the official language.

Most scholars now agree that it was Heraclius who initiated the militarization of Anatolia, known as the theme (military district) system, which was further developed and extended by his successors. It placed the Anatolian provinces under military governors and provided land grants not only for frontier soldiers but also for soldiers and peasants in the interior, on condition of hereditary military service. The effects were revolutionary. A flexible defense developed in depth; a free, militarized peasantry arose; agriculture revived; and the state was relieved of much of the burden of soldiers’ pay. Unruly mercenaries were largely replaced by native soldiers with a personal interest in protecting the empire. Indeed, during the four centuries that the theme system remained intact, the empire could be defeated but not conquered. Byzantium withstood Islām’s fierce onslaughts and sheltered Europe’s infant civilization. Yet there is no known record of the inception of the theme system, and it was rather because of his epic struggle against Persia and his recovery of wood believed to be from Christ’s Cross that Heraclius became a hero of medieval legend.

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